Busy week

On Monday and Tuesday I attended a workshop organised by IRC (International Rescue Committee) on "Mainstreaming Protection Principles", which, in a nutshell, means ensuring that human rights, safety and dignity are safeguarded across all activities and sectors of a development project. It was very interesting, and there were several areas that were particularly relevant to the project that I am involved with, including identifying barriers that prevent individuals or groups of people from accessing particular services.
One of the aims of the VSO Early Childhood project is to increase the access for migrant children to early years education. However, the reasons why some migrant children are not attending school are many, varied and complex, and this was one of the many questions that I discussed with the MoI education chiefs in our follow up meetings on Thursday and Friday. The purpose of these meetings was to begin to discuss the project in a bit more detail, and to find out some more about the background situation. In both sub-district areas where we will be working, there already seem to be some very positive initiatives going on in terms of supporting access to education for migrant children, and they are very supportive and welcoming of our project, which is all very positive. The next month will be taken up mostly with initial observations at the centres that we will be working with, to assess strengths and areas of need.
I am feeling quite frustrated with the language situation, as I have made very little progress since our initial language training. In fact, I might even have gone backwards! I have wondered if I should get some more lessons, though I'm not sure if that would help me develop the sort of language that I need. In some ways, having my coordinator to translate probably makes me a bit lazy. If I was thrown in the deep end and was forced to try and communicate on my own then I might get somewhere a bit faster. I will be getting a lot more exposure now that we will be spending most of our time in schools, so I'm hoping things may improve.